Lancashire writer pens novel for new film

Crime author and ex policeman Nick Oldham from Fulwood

Former Insp Nick Oldham swapped a life of fighting crime to writing about it after retiring from Lancashire Police in 2005.

The film, We Still Kill The Old Way, features a host of stars and for Nick, penning the novel based on the screenplay by Dougie Brimson, Gary Lawrence and Sacha Bennett was second nature.

He had already turned his hand to adapting a screenplay into a novel before with last year’s hit film, Vendetta, starring Eastenders’ Danny Dyer and Vincvent Regan.

Father-of-one Nick, 58, said: “This time round it was slightly different as the timeframe was longer but last time I had a rough cut of the film to use as a guide as well as the screenplay.

“There was no such luxury this time as the film went into production as I was writing the novel, so I only had the shooting script to work from.”

The plot follows Richie Archer, played by Ian Ogilvy in the film, who is an old time gangster, retired to Spain and living a quiet and settled life. That is until he receives a phone call that his brother and ex-gang member Charlie has been savagely murdered by a gang of feral youths.

Richie heads back to London for the funeral and reassembles his old group of gangsters, all now in their 60s and 70s, to exact revenge against the hoodie thugs who took Charlie’s life.

Nick, who is also the author of the DI Henry Christie novels, said: “The plot is already there but my job is to embellish the characterisations that in a screenplay look flat on the page but are brought to life by the accomplished actors.

“I can also add back story which the film sometimes doesn’t allow for, or have the scope or sometimes budget or time to bring to the film.”

Writing has always been a driving force for Nick who wrote his first novel while still in the police.

He said: “I drew inspiration from the job and incidents that happened.

“The first book I wrote was partly inspired by the Handless Corpse case.”

The infamous discovery of the handless corpse of drug dealer Marty Johnstone in Eccleston Delph near Chorley in 1979 was Lancashire Police’s biggest investigation and helped smash an international drug smuggling ring.